Someday, when I’m old and famous and dying of an exploded stomach, they’ll ask me what the most important thing I learned in my immense life was, and I’ll say, “Make friends who not only fulfill you emotionally but also have nice cars, big pools, central air, and pets.” Several years ago, I made the very wise decision to become friends with my co-worker Ash, who later married Michael, who had already made the wise decision to be born into a family that owns a house in Cape Cod.

Kamran wasn’t feeling well, so I left alone for their apartment on a Thursday night a couple of weeks ago, and then we picked up our friend Jeff and drove the four hours to the cutest little cottage in the Cape:

my bedroom!

We woke up early Friday morning to hit Keltic Kitchen before the crowds. Michael had been talking about this place for months and telling me it was the best breakfast I’d ever have, but I just couldn’t believe him because of the kitschy name.

But OMG. It was all that he described and more. I had creme brulee French toast with an orange-flavored custard sauce. They had French toast samplers and home fries. We left so stuffed we were unsure we’d ever eat again.

After playing around in the restaurant’s Irish store,

we went to a grocery store to stock up on mostly sweets,

and a surf shop that strangely sold hermit crabs

to stock up on flip-flops and weaponry to protect us on the mean streets of Hyannis:

We headed straight for the beach but found the water cold and the skies overcast,

so we spent the whole time goofing around on a jetty full of fishermen:

Afterward, ankles still covered in sand, we went to Captain Parker’s for breadbowls full of clam chowder, and then spent the night . . . at the arcade in the mall . . . driving around and singing along to “Kiss from a Rose” . . . and seeing X-Men: First Class. Weird, right?

But it was vacation, and we’ll do what we want! We also had ice cream at Four Seas on Kim’s recommendation, and after watching Ash get ogled outside by a maybe-racist/maybe-just-too-smalltown-to-have-ever-seen-someone-not-white girl, I had some crazy concoction of peanut butter ice cream with peanut butter sauce and peanut-butter-infused baby limbs or something, because nothing that doesn’t involve human sacrifice can taste that good.

Unable to resist the call of Irish foodstuffs, we went again to Keltic Kitchen the next morning, and I got something EVEN BETTER than creme brulee French toast, if you can imagine that. It was the 2×4: two eggs (over hard), two Irish sausages, two slices of cinnamon French toast, and two bangers, or thinly-sliced pork belly marbled with fat that melts in your mouth and is a lot less scary than its name would suggest.

We went to a different beach that afternoon and left off the sunscreen this time, having learned our lesson from the day before. So of course it was bright and beautiful and we all burned.

I swear, though, Cape beaches are freaky. The first one was covered in so many shells you had to wear your sandals on the sand, and the second one was full of seagulls plucking crabs out of the sand mere feet from shore.

IS THAT WHAT I’M STANDING ON WHEN I’M IN THE OCEAN? I don’t think I’m enough of a grownup to know these things.

Afterward, we went to the Christmas Tree Shops, to which I can only say, “What a bunch of horse crap! There wasn’t a Christmas tree in sight.” But really, why would I want there to be in the middle of June? Rename your store, you East Coast pinko hippie holiday-loving scum.

Then we stopped for more chowder at Seaside Pub, also on Kim’s recommendation, and everyone agreed it was pretty tasteless, as Kimerly told us it was going to be, so I’m not sure who you want to trust here. For dessert, we went to Katie’s Homemade Ice Cream simply for the name and despite its three out of five stars on Yelp, so of course it turned out to be truly delicious and to have important flavors like cake batter.

That night, we went to Pirate’s Cove for “adventure golf” that included so many testicle jokes,

dancing to entertain people waiting in line at other holes,

holes in one by Ash and me,

and a shark bursting through a wall that I think has very little to do with pirates but was still cool:

Sunday morning, we left the house at 8 a.m. and weren’t allowed any Keltic Kitchen due to time constraints, but even despite that severe oversight, it was a relaxing trip that let me see a whole new part of the U.S. Too bad my beach cravings are only 100 times worse now.

Thanks, Mike and Ash!